2022-05-21
(I may skip the next entry, as I’ll be out of the country, travelling to attend a scientific conference; it’s unclear whether I’ll either have the normal information intake or the time to write things up)
Readings
There’s a lot of interesting history in why most languages came to be written left-to-right and why some go the other way:
Recent work in understanding the mechanisms of heart disease: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-05-haywire-cells-protein-bad-cholesterol.html
Graphyne, a crystalline structure of carbon with electrical properties that are predicted to be interesting, was recently synthesised successfully: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44160-022-00068-7
Another great talk on planetary formation:
Interesting to see how stenographers achieve high levels of speed; I wonder how long it would take to learn one of these well enough:
Whether forgetting as we age is a kindness or not, better understanding of how memory fades with age is a boon, and the mechanisms suggested in this are fascinating (that a useful chemical/functional tension becomes unbalanced): https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-05-neuroscientists-brain-mechanism-tied-age-related.html
Interesting to see investigation of how successfully plants can grow on alien soils: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-022-03334-8
Unprompted Thoughts
Although the sponsorship message is pretty obnoxious, I think this video asks an important question: whether art should be primarily judged through a moral lens. To me, the answer is a clear no - art as a whole is about expression and broadening of our mental horizons. While I think it’s fine for art to aim itself to be evaluated through that lens, there should be a lot of art depicting and exploring ideas that don’t align well with contemporary morals, and art that people come to believe has negative effects on society should still be made, distributed, and considered. Even the worst examples raised by the moralists are things that we should tolerate, perhaps as a whole celebrate.
I spent part of the week thinking about a moral question posed in Areo: for those who attain educational, athletic, or other acclaim through lies but in doing so show a lot of skill in those areas deserve to keep some of that merit? The article makes a decent case to show how reasonable people might say yes, but to me any position or merit also should reflect on trust and character moving forward; meeting qualifications through fraud may not undo genuine achievements acquired under false premises, but they make it impossible to trust that person in the future, and choosing to recognise those achievements taints what recognition means in the future. https://areomagazine.com/2022/04/08/the-curious-case-of-a-scholar-who-didnt-exist/
Current Events
While Ukraine forces are apparently slowly retaking ground elsewhere in the country, the far eastern city of Mariupol lost its last holdout Ukraine forces, and atrocities committed by Russian forces continue to be revealed.
There were 4 shootings over about a week mostly in this entry’s time period; the first (a racially motivated shooting near Buffalo New York) got the most attention, at least partially because there was a moral lesson to pump from it (I don’t regret this entirely - the shooter’s social media presence, which I perused, painted the picture of an isolated and desperately unhappy man who somehow became fixated on racial replacement theories, and to whatever extent real racism still exists in the US it often takes that form). The latter shootings were between rival hispanic groups in texas, then a Taiwanese immigrant who wanted to strike out at fellow Taiwanese immigrants over politics, and finally .. actually, while doing research for this, I came across this depressing list; there are more mass shootings than I was aware of. Although some of this may depend on meanings of “mass”. That’s depressing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2022
Images of Sag A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, left embargo and were released to the general public.
Australia had its federal elections, with Labor becoming the leading party and Anthony Albanese set to become PM.
Reviewlets
ZHP - The game is extremely funny, and is a set of wide-ranging gameplay experiments from Nippon Ichi; it’s not very close to either the Disgaea or Phantom formula. It plays with a bunch of ideas that I normally find annoying - durability systems, certain movement schemes, item loss on death, but the writing and story combined with the freshness have me giving it time anyhow.
Tales of Heresy (book) - The last time I was at DragonCon a fellow attendee saw me reading some World of Darkness rulebooks and approached to talk about books; he recommended I give the warhammer novels a go. It’s not normally the kind of book I like (describing a martial world that I don’t yearn for in the way some people do), but, like with ZHP, there’s enough interestingness in it so far that I’ve given it a short-leash lease on my time/attention. I don’t know if I’ll read all the way through or rest it at some nice breaking point, but it’s fine for now
The Last Wish (book) - I’m finally getting around to reading the Witcher novels; so far I’m really enjoying the first one, although it looks to be taking the form of a collection of short stories (which I normally am not into)
Amusements
The prospect of having new experiences, whether they change how we live in the world materially or just stir up curiosities, makes life more worthwhile. Interesting to see that dolphins may be as curious as we are:
There are few things as lovely as baby goats:
Recent Music
Biffy Clyro - The Captain - I don’t remember hearing about this Scottish band at all when they were active (which feels a pity given how I’m guessing they made an effort to sound American). The song and album feel happy and celebratory, almost to excess.
Eisley - Telescope Eyes - Another band I missed hearing about at the time, but it reminds me of a lot of songs filled with sadness and longing from the mid-90s. Tempting to blend it into the Wallflowers’ “One Headlight”.
Gnarls Barkley - Crazy - My sinuses have been bothering me this week, and while trying to figure out if there are songs I can sing along with in my current state, I settled on this; it’s a fantastic song and a lot of fun to harmonize with